Cabinet Office and Ark Data Centres launch joint venture

The Cabinet Office and Ark Data Centres today announce the launch of Crown Hosting Data Centres Limited a data centre joint venture company that will deliver increased efficiency, improved value and transparency of service utilisation across all of the public sector.

Designed to enhance the public experience of IT and accelerate new government services to market, the Crown Hosting Data Centres procurement framework will substantially reduce the operational risk and overall cost of public sector departments and organisations.

Crown Hosting Data Centre Services will offer a rich portfolio of hosting services at different levels of accreditation underpinned by a comprehensive set of SLAs in line with industry standards.

"The joint venture company will simplify the data centre services selection process in government and further drive the unbundling of large legacy contracts," explains Steve Hall, CEO at Crown Hosting Data Centres. "It provides publicly funded, mandated and regulated organisations with a pre-approved contract that leverages the buying power of the whole of government for the fastest, simplest access to secure data centre services."

Trading with immediate effect, Crown Hosting Data Centres comes to market with three customers as the Department for Work & Pensions, the Highways Agency and the Home Office have already entered into call-offs under the framework.

Huw Owen, CEO at Ark Data Centres adds, "We are extremely proud to be selected as the joint venture partner and look forward to working together to drive real transformational change across the provision of the Government's data centre services. We are committed to realising the huge potential cost benefits for the UK public purse."

Ark Data Centres was chosen following a competitive tender process, including due diligence and security checks. Ark's solution delivers energy efficiency, value for money and transparency of service utilisation. Compliant with all relevant government security standards, Ark Data Centres also demonstrated compelling costs savings as well as an impressive agility through scalable, service-based (‘utility') models.